The Woman Who Listens
For Jennie Silbert, the path to building communities began in an unexpected place – a tent at Burlingame State Park in Rhode Island. "My vacation home was a tent," she recalls with warmth. "We camped out... eight bucks a night, that's what our family could afford, and it was everything." As a third-grader, she remembers "feeling like I had died and gone to heaven camping in Southern Rhode Island," where she "fell in love with the beaches... the area and... the people."
That early connection to the community would shape her future in ways she couldn't have imagined. In her mid-twenties, Jennie experienced what she calls a "tectonic shift" – a pivotal moment of transformation. "It was a shift in a relationship, in deciding to go to grad school, in deciding to really unapologetically put myself first," she explains. "In ways that I owned my mistakes, and in ways that I was going to really own my future."
The turning point came on her first night of grad school. "I remember tearing up," she shares. "I was going through changes myself, so I was a fractal of this thing I was trying to understand... I just vividly remember knowing, shivering, walking back to my car that night. I knew I had found what I was meant to do."
Today, Jennie and her husband run Spartina Consulting, where they facilitate strategic planning conversations, leadership development workshops, and culture-building forums. Her self-described superpower? "Asking questions that harness people's wisdom. They don't always know they have it- the stories, the experiences they bring that can not only inform us of what has worked in the past but also what could be in the future."
Their leadership approach is deeply collaborative. "Though it might seem easier to make decisions in silos where I'm the boss and I get to call the shots," she reflects, "it misses out on so much opportunity that I would have my blinders to or simply not be aware of."
This philosophy is evident in their recent work with the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, where they organized a community forum that brought together representatives from the entire pantry network across the state. "We hosted a morning breakfast where, in addition to breaking bread, participants... from all different voices and perspectives came and had conversations about what they value most, the strengths of their food security network."
A year and a half ago, life presented Jennie with an unexpected challenge when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, just two and a half months after her mother received a similar diagnosis. Through her experience with treatment – including surgery, radiation, and ongoing medications – Jennie discovered another calling: advocacy.
A chance encounter with Representative Teresa Tanzi in the yogurt section of a grocery store became a catalyst for change. Jennie shared her story about the importance of supplemental screening for dense breast tissue and the challenges of insurance coverage. This led to her testifying before the Rhode Island Health and Human Services Committee, where she pushed for a law requiring health insurance companies to provide supplementary screening to women with dense breast tissue.
"I know I'm capable of picking up the phone and fighting the fight," she says. "Not everyone knows they hold that agency to be a fighter. And I wanted to ensure that no one else had to fight that hard to get what they needed."
This spirit of advocacy extends beyond her own experience. Serving as her brother's healthcare proxy during his battle with chronic heart failure, she gained a deeper understanding of healthcare accessibility. As her brother once asked her, "What do people do like me who don't have people like you?" This question reinforced her belief that "we were brought here to do more for each other... serve each other forever."
At the heart of Jennie's work is a simple but powerful mantra: "People commit to what they help to create." She believes "every person is worthy of learning, working, and earning to their full potential." As she sees it, her purpose is "to invite the conversations that become the change we all need to lean in and see."
For Jennie, success is measured in moments of connection. "It's what I live for," she says, "watching people's eyes shine when they're engaged with another person and ideating about what else could be. And then they go and become it."
From that tent in Southern Rhode Island to facilitating vital community conversations today, Jennie Silbert's journey shows how personal experience can transform into purposeful action and how bringing people together can create lasting change.
